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Ukraine: Crimea in the dark: The silencing of dissent

15 December 2016, Index number: EUR 50/5330/2016

Since the Russian occupation and annexation of Crimea in February-March 2014, the Russian and de facto local authorities, have demanded total submission to this brute fact. With most opponents of Crimea’s annexation harassed into exile or silence, Crimean Tatar leaders and activists have been the most organized focus of opposition, and have borne the brunt of the repression. Their representative structure, the Mejlis, was banned as an “extremist” organisation and any association with it has been outlawed; its leaders have been exiled or prosecuted on a range of trumped up charges; several have been forcibly disappeared.